Despite yesterday’s hoopla about AOL, there’s a new online desktop out there. It’s still very much a beta (the mp3 player stopped responding in Safari) but it’s pretty and gives a good idea of where things are going.

If it has reasonable bandwidth requirements, it could do very well among people who use Internet Cafes, either because they cannot afford a computer, or because they’re traveling. I was astounded by the ubiquity of and crowds at Internet Cafes in India.

The other potential market is people who want to have a personal desktop they can share at work and at home. This market is less safe because corporations can easily block out services. A service for people in those markets would do better targeting people’s personal mobile phones.

Nevertheless, I didn’t see anything in their terms of service about how they protect my data from over-inquisitive people.